


When You're Smilin' (the whole world smiles with you)

by MomentsOfWeakness



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:30:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MomentsOfWeakness/pseuds/MomentsOfWeakness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim understood why Spock was Spock and he wouldn’t have him any other way. But what Jim liked about Spock the best was his smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You're Smilin' (the whole world smiles with you)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this post ---> http://mrssylargray.tumblr.com/post/96666945589 on Tumblr, which is technically Zachary Quinto, but my brain begs to differ. (Title taken from a Frank Sinatra song.)

James Tiberius Kirk had done a lot of things in his life. Like...a lot. Some of them bad, some of them good (he likes to think the good has finally overshadowed the bad), some of them (okay a lot of them) stupid, some brave and some kind and some done with all the determination he possessed.

There are stories of the things he’s done being written in history books even now. He’s done a lot of things to be proud of.

But the one thing he’s proud of the most, the thing he works for the hardest...is making his first officer smile.

Jim is aware that Spock is Vulcan, and of all that that entails. He knows that the Vulcan side of Spock (though no more so in a biological sense) outweighs the human side. He knows this. He respects it.

When Spock first signed onto the Enterprise as Jim’s first officer Jim had made a point of researching Vulcan culture. Their first (several) meetings had not gone well, but through them they had come to a mutual respect and Jim wanted to learn about Spock. About his people’s history (the more people who knew now the better) and about why he was the way he was.

He learned all about the ancient, violent nature of Vulcan’s and about the teachings of Surak. He understood now why Spock kept himself so closed off, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with it, and he respected that. Mostly. He was trying.

They still butted heads on occasion, when Spock was being extra impassive and Jim was being extra histrionic. But after so many years they had an understanding. A connection that for the most part kept them balanced.

Bones liked to say that together they made one brain, Spock the logic and Jim the emotion. (Jim liked to think that made Bones the grumpy, shriveled little heart of the operation, but he only said that on occasion to watch the good doctor sputter and grouse.) And if that was true, if together they made one full person that could lead the crew and travel the vastness of space, and somehow make all the crazy things they did work, well, Jim was okay with that.

Jim understood why Spock was Spock and he wouldn’t have him any other way.

But what Jim liked about Spock the best was his smile.

Not the careful smirk of his lips which came in a hundred different varieties (most of them sarcastic), or the soft upturn of fondness that usually came after Jim had done something particularly stupid (and came away mostly unharmed, blood or broken bones did not in any way earn him that gentle look) or when he had been particularly kind.

No, James Tiberius Kirk had spent the last 8 years of his life trying his damnedest to coax out those full blown, mirthful, krinkle-eyed smiles that were rarely ever seen on his unflappable and aloof first officer. Those smiles that shattered the Vulcan exterior and showed the humanness that was buried deep.

Jim lived for those smiles. He fought hard for those smiles.

Oh how he fought.

They had been like the Holy Grail at first. Ever since he saw the first one, unexpected and completely exhilarating, he had worked hard to draw them out again and again, like an archaeologist tap-tapping at the earth to find the treasured waiting inside.

For the first 5 years he could count them on his fingers, the amount of times he had seen the true, joyful, laughing smiles (usually accompanied by a blush and then quickly gone again) and he had cherished every one. They were carefully cataloged, like a child with a butterfly collection, each one written down in his own private Captain’s log that only Bones had ever seen.

He had scoffed the first time he read an entry about Spock’s smile (the fourth one, garnered when Jim had come back from a mission where he had unexpectedly assisted in the labor of a Golloring woman, covered in purple goo and sporting tiny little teeth marks on his hands and neck where he had cradled the squirming yellow baby). Bones called Jim a teenage girl, asked if Jim was going to go with Spock to the annual Starfleet Ball and did he need a corsage to go with his dress uniform.

What Jim had said in return didn’t bear repeating and Bones had strolled from the Captain’s quarters still laughing (those smiles Jim could do without, thank you very much).

But that hadn’t stopped him.

Each smile he wrote down was like a tiny victory, an achievement few other’s could boast of. He deserved an award: ‘Best at getting uptight Vulcan first officers to smile’. (Maybe he would make his own, hyperglue it with a picture of himself to Bones’ office wall. Yeah, that would show him.)

In the last three years Jim was beyond thrilled that he had been able to lose track of how many times Spock had smiled at him like that (he could look up the number in his log, but that spoiled the joy). They were the perfect team, him and his first officer. The history books would be filled with their stories by the time they were done and ready to retire, two old men (well, one not so old but Jim didn’t like to think about that) passing on the torch to the next generation.

By then Jim would have hundreds of smiles. More if he tried his hardest. Maybe then he would go back and count them all. 

Jim walked onto the bridge for the B shift, Spock passing by him into the elevator, his own shift just ending. When Spock turned around to face the doors their eyes met and Jim received a quirk of an eyebrow. Not even a smile, just the ticking up of one of those perfectly pointed brows (these looks too had a thousand different meanings and Jim liked to think he knew them all by now).

This particular one meant ‘don’t get into any trouble while I’m away’.

Jim smiled back, a full-watt thing that showed teeth and all the innocence he possessed (it wasn’t much). This earned him a small curve of Spock’s lips before the doors closed.

Not a true smile, not the ones Jim worked so hard for, that he seemed to crave like the crew craved sunlight after weeks in the darkness of space. But he would take it. For now.


End file.
